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Nice synopsis of Seditas interview. Wish they would've asked him when he receives the payoff .
Kane Case Conclusions
So let’s recap: on August 1st, Patrick Kane was out late with friends at a bar near Buffalo. He, a male friend, and two girls went back to his house early in the morning, driven by an off-duty cop who works as a driver for Kane. Several hours later, one of the girls went to a local hospital with her mother, claiming that Kane had followed her into his bedroom at the house, overpowered her, and raped her. She had a rape kit done (a collection of physical and forensic evidence) and gave a statement to the police.
A three-month investigation ensued, led by a female prosecutor from the local special victims unit. The two lead detectives were a former captain from the state police and a female detective with experience working in the sex crimes unit. Possibly worth noting, Buffalo is the second-largest city in New York State, and Erie County has a population of just under a million people, so this is not small town justice; police and prosecutors will have had experience working on a wide variety of murder, rape, and other major felony cases.
Ultimately, the prosecutor and the district attorney closed the investigation without bringing it before a grand jury or filing any charges, stating that the evidence did not substantiate the allegations. The DA did not have to release any information or make any detailed statements about the investigation, but he chose to do so, repeatedly stating that he felt it was his office’s responsibility both to prosecute the guilty and to exonerate the innocent. His interviews are worth reading/watching, but here are the major points:
Detectives went to Kane’s house the day of the incident and collected evidence. They immediately noticed significant discrepencies between the woman’s story and the layout of Kane’s bedroom. Sedita (the DA) said that that alone was not conclusive, since trauma can impact someone’s memory of details, but it was their first indication that there might be issues with the accusation.
The accuser claimed to have been raped on Kane’s bed, but her DNA wasn’t found on any of the bedding, though there was DNA from Kane and another woman.
The accuser claimed to have been screaming during the assault, but the two other people in the house (one of whom was her friend) were in close proximity and didn’t hear anything.
The accuser’s friend generally didn’t support her account and retained her own attorney because the accuser was pressuring her to lie about what she’d seen and heard.
Detectives reviewed surveillance footage from the bar where they met and interviewed the bar employees and found contradictions with the accuser’s account of what happened there.
Kane’s DNA was found under the woman’s nails and on hickeys on her shoulder, but nowhere else on her body or her underwear. Sedita was clear that there was no evidence of penetration, which was what she alleged had happened.
As soon as the DNA results came back, the accuser and her attorney tried to suggest that they may have been tampered with. They were later involved in a public hoax in which they claimed the rape kit bag was left on her mother’s doorstep and the rape kit itself had been mishandled by the police (a very serious allegation of misconduct). The DA’s office provided clear evidence that the rape kit had never been in any bag, that there was video footage of the unbroken chain of custody of the rape kit, and that the bag had been given to the accuser’s mother at the hospital. The attorney stepped down from the case, saying that he had been misled. Sedita said that there was clear evidence the mother was part of the hoax, and that they suspected the daughter was as well but couldn’t prove it.
The hoax was revealed on September 25th, and detectives brought the accuser in for an interview on October 9th, which she cut short. She didn’t come in again until October 27th, at which point, she stated that she no longer wanted to cooperate with the investigation. She signed an affidavit to that effect, which included a statement that she had not been pressured or paid to drop the charges. Sedita confirmed that they could have gone forward anyway if they felt the case had merit and could simply have subpoenaed her to testify before the grand jury as they often do in domestic violence cases.
Kane, likely on his attorney’s advice, exercised his right not to speak to police or prosecutors about the case. They did get a search warrant for his cell phone and didn’t find any indications of guilt, though evidence from the accuser’s phone showed that she was interested in pursuing monetary settlement from the early stages of the investigation.
Sedita was ultimately as clear as he could be about the fact that the entire team of investigators felt there was no evidence to back up the allegations and significant evidence to contradict them. He said that the only reason he wasn’t comfortable stating that Kane was completely exonerated was because they never got his side of the story and thus don’t know what actually happened between the two, only what the evidence showed didn’t happen. He emphasized that the evidence was more consistent with innocence than with guilt.
When asked if he’d charge the accuser with filing a false report, Sedita said that they’d considered it but decided not to, primarily because Kane was never charged and the case didn’t go to trial.
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Proud member of the white guy grievance committee
It aint the six minutes. Its what happens in those six minutes.
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